The former Soviet states of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus are very much my motherland and the motherland of so many American Jews who fled those regions to get the hell out of Czarist persecution. One of my grandfathers was from Tereshki in Belarus near the Polish border, West of Minsk. My other grandfather was from Nizhni Novgorod near Moscow. One grandmother was from St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) while the other was from Gorodiesche in the Ukraine.
Jewish victims of a Czarist Pogram in Boguslav Ukraine wrapped in their prayer shawls; why my people had to get the hell out of Czarist Russia
From having my DNA studied I learned that I’m a 61 out of 67 point Y chromosome match to a John Wolins (whose family name was shortened from Wolinsky). His most distant ancestor known by conventional genealogy was Yoina Wolinsky who lived in Boguslav, Ukraine, circa 1760. So as it turns out, my great friend Bruce Boguslav whose family originated in Boguslav Ukraine and who has a bunch of Wolinsky’s in his family is a distant cousin from around 250 years ago.
Arielle Boguslav
When Bruce and I met it was uncanny how much we resemble each other. We look more alike than we do to our own biological brothers. Bruce’s Cambridge (UK) educated daughter Arielle is now living in Moscow and is writing her excellent account of life there, entitled Journey to the Motherland.
http://aboguslav.blogspot.com/
In these tense days diplomatically in the former Soviet Union, it’s an interesting perspective of the daily goings on in her travels and travails around the country. Check it out.
L-Bruce Boguslav, R-Jan B. Tucker
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